Tourists and Trade

<p><b>How two roadside craft shops in upstate New York transformed American crafts into a fine art.</b></p><p><b>Finalist for the 2023 </b><b><i>Foreword</i></b><b> INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category </b></p><p>Amid the economic turmoil of the Great Depression in 1929 Clarence Wemett an upstate New York petroleum merchant underwrote a craft shop bordering U.S. Route 20 and a few years later a different one 15 miles away. At precisely the wrong time for such things to happen the improbable idea of selling discretionary goods targeted to a consumer market characterized by 25 percent unemployment at a rural highway's roadside achieved traction: the first shop was in business for a quarter century the second for nearly 40 years. More significant than their surprising longevity is the shops' long-lasting contribution to a nascent national movement that spans crafts personally created for individual use to the commercial work that sees craft elevated to a fine art-craft objects moved from pantry shelves to museum vitrines and craftworkers from hobbyists to professionals. The roadside shops introduced a business model that 70 years later is widely experienced on a very different but equally super highway the Internet and their story is a chapter in the pre-history of the modern crafts movement.</p>